1932 Ford Roadster - Postwar Perfect

As straight and true as flat, black asphalt through a Kansas cornfield, there’s a perfect line between this sweet Deuce roadster and America’s earliest romance with hot rods, drag racing, and high-performance machinery. Well, it’s not quite a perfect line; for Gary Evans, there were escape roads along the way. Now 74, Gary is among the few around today who, as a 16-year-old kid from Pratt, Kansas, witnessed hot rodding’s first big national showdown—the NHRA Nationals at Great Bend, Kansas, on Saturday, October 1, 1955. (“They were lined up for more than a mile to get in,” he recalls. “It was a big deal.”) Already swept up in the nascent movement, he’d been reading HOT ROD since 1953 and was a member of the local Shafters Hot Rod Club. His first car was a 1929 Chevy three-window coupe that he and his dad bought for $65 in a junkyard. Evans soon installed a 265 Chevy and drove it to California in 1959.

2/9When purchased eight years and 2,000 man-hours ago, this diamond was deceptively rough. “Jim Tipper and I tore it down and found the crossmembers were cracked,” Gary explains. “We had to tear the entire car apart and start over.” Brookville’s steel skin now rides on ASC rails and a 4-inch-dropped-’n’-drilled Chassis Engineering front axle. Evans plans to further lower the profile by chopping another inch out of the Brookville windscreen. The color is Centari pitch black.

3/9A mild rake is induced by a combination of the dropped axle and short 5.50-16 Excelsior tires up front with taller 7.50-16s out back. Evans machined an adapter hub to accept ’32 caps on ’46–’48 wheels. The decklid was punched by Steve’s Auto Restoration (Portland, Oregon). A ’41 Chevrolet contributed taillights. The stainless spreader bar acts as a bumper and protective shield for a 10-gallon gas tank. That’s an original Hollywood license-plate light.

Growing up, the young gearhead was equally fascinated by the B-29 bombers that roared into an air base south of the family farm. Upon graduating high school, Gary joined the Navy and exhibited exceptional skills with metal fabrication and the ability to tame, tune, and boost high-powered aircraft engines. That talent, plus military experience, led to post-service stints in the aviation industry with Boeing, Cessna (including as crew chief on the experimental flight line), Del Monte Aviation, and Collins Radio, where Evans worked on Apollo projects. In the ’70s, he was called in to repair a crop duster, and, through a twist of circumstance, his performance-aircraft knowledge thrust him into the rarified world of World War II warbird restoration and racing. Gary prepared P-51 Mustang and F8F Bearcat fighters for the Air Trophy circuit and reconstructed vintage PBY, SeaBee, and Fairchild airplanes. For relaxation, he ran a Fiat-bodied fuel altered powered by one of John Peters’ potent small-block Chevys.

4/9Straight ahead and straight out of the ’40s, the roadster proudly carries the signature stance of a classic hot rod from the postwar epoch. Shocks are by Pete & Jake. The headlamps are early production Ford. “I had halogens in them earlier, but cruising or idling drew too much off the battery.” Gary says. The license plate is a California-issued original that Evans scored at a swap meet. Its bracket was machined at Seabright. Under the skin, the Deuce has been rewired with an Evans-designed harness and a Centech circuit-breaker panel. To accentuate the body lines, Gary shortened the side mirror’s arm by 1 inch.

“In the late ’80s, I gave up aviation,” Evans says. Drawn to the moderate climes of California’s coast and his first love, he worked at Frank Schonig Street Rods before opening his own shop in Scotts Valley. Since 2002, Gary has devoted his full time and talent to Seabright Hot Rods, bringing him full circle to his past. Styled after the roadsters that roared through Gary’s postwar childhood, this black beauty sleeps in the small Santa Cruz shop amidst various customer projects. All of them share a distinctive, classic American rodding lineage. “I love traditional cars,” the builder explains, “because that’s where I started in hot rods.”

5/9Seabright Hot Rods fabricated slick airscoops for the ’46–’48 Ford drums. The kingpins and backing plates are production items.

9/9Functional simplicity is the hallmark of Seabright Hot Rods. That finned coil up front is a hand-fabricated retrieval-and-recirculating receptacle for the radiator. The generator casing masks a ’64 Ford Falcon 12-volt armature and field. The spark plugs are NGKJ B6S shorts.